Gen Y'ers post grief online

VA. TECH MASSACREWeb emotions show they may not be as desensitized as many think

EYDER PERALTA, Copyright 2007 Houston Chronicle

Published
5:30 am CDT, Wednesday, April 18, 2007

As the students of Virginia Tech described their experiences on camera Monday, they seemed calm and collected. They recalled their experiences eloquently and with an almost unthinkable clarity. It was a world of difference from Columbine, where eyewitnesses sobbed uncontrollably.

Online, it's a different story, though.

On Facebook.com, many of the Tech students are using a black ribbon over the school logo as their icon. A quick search on Technorati yields thousands of blog posts on the subject. Beth 0319 writes: "I didn't know anyone there but I just feel this tremendous sadness that has no where to go. It's just all so senseless."

Is the grieving process different for Generation Y, a group that has come of age at a time of world turmoil and a time when social networking has reached critical mass?

The fundamental difference is 9/11, said Anastasia Goodstein, author of Totally Wired: What Teens and Tweens Are Really Doing Online.

"After that, kids got used to seeing so much carnage ... and add to that the Iraq war, violence has become a part of the culture," she said. "Every 24 episode this season is filled with torture."

There is evidence to suggest that Generation Y is desensitized to violence, said Larry D. Rosen, the author of The Mental Health TechnologyBible. And that could explain the calmness seen in TV interviews. But it also could have to do with the fact that Gen Y'ers are "oversensitized to their own feelings," he said.

"In some ways, the Internet has made kids more honest," Rosen said. Posthumous messages on Facebook and MySpace are practice for when these young people have to face the same thing in the "offline" world.

After Columbine, the images were of children with their hands over their mouths. And Sept. 11's iconic images were of people stumbling like zombies, unable to react, through the rubble.

Rosen contends that young people are more vocal because they are better equipped to express their feelings. They do so calmly, without the embarrassment public grieving is usually afforded.

Technology has given people a forum, Goodstein said. Perhaps during those other tragedies "people had something to say but you just weren't hearing them," she added.

Monday's tragedy, she said, is the first massive incident to occur after the revolution in social-networking technology. Now the dead's MySpace pages become tribute pages, where friends and family continue to have a conversation as if they were still alive. MyDeathSpace.com chronicles MySpace members who have died.

Connie Saindon, founder of the San Diego-based Survivors of Violent Loss Program, said that technology is allowing the dead to live on forever.

"And it's true, they are still here," she said. "We have statues of George Washington. Why not a virtual statue?"